Gaskets for motor vehicles are known, for example from Italian Patent No. 1,017,502 and Italian Utility Model No. 21692 8/83 in the name of the present applicant, which are suitable for forming a seal between the vehicle body and openable parts of the bodywork, such as doors, hatches, hood and the like when these are closed, of the type comprising a deformable profiled strip able to be fixed to the vehicle body by snapping-on, to said profiled strip there being connected along the straight regions of engagement between the vehicle body and the openable part a tubular section divided into a pair of separate adjacent chambers, one of which acts as a bellows air chamber and the other as a seat for magnetized material.
These magnetic gaskets represent considerable progress over compression-operated gaskets without a magnetic seal, in terms both of improved sealing and of lesser pulling action to effect closure.
There is however the technical problem of adapting this type of gasket to the varying range of shapes which the engagement region between the fixed and openable parts can assume, particularly in curvilinear regions, and especially when the radius of curvature is small. In very accentuated curvature regions there are considerable problems relating to deformation and squashing of the magnetic gaskets, which can result in loss of seal, formation of folds and points of discontinuity, or indeed breakage of the gasket after a certain time.
European Patent Application No. 0519565 of the present applicant proposes a gasket able to solve this technical problem. It provides a magnetic gasket for forming a seal between a fixed part and an openable part in regions of curvilinear extension, for example in particular between the body and door of a vehicle, of the type comprising a profiled strip for fixing to said parts and a chamber housing a magnetized bar, in which said profiled fixing strip and said tubular chamber for the magnetized bar are connected together by an extendable deformable tubular chamber the opposing free walls of which are substantially curvilinear and curved in the same direction.